Search This Blog

Subscribe to this blog

Let us send you cool stuff!

Ten years ago

This picture dates back a little over 10 years ago, back to 2004, during an OSA Anual Meeting in Rochester. I found it and decided to post it, since I believe it marks the beginning of my embryonic career, also when I started working with optical traps.

In the picture you can see myself, round spectacles and more hair. To the right, my Master's project with colloidal quantum dots. It was a different world, a time for discovery and experimentation, of trial-and-error. Sometimes today, I do miss the grand challenges near to impossible, needed to be surpassed, by a highly motivated and perseverante unskilled undergraduate.

Comments

Popular Posts

Recently the Ministry of Education has released the most recent results for higher education in Brazil, The IGC index is a metric that represents the quality of the university education in general, ranging from 1 to 5, the ones below 3 are considered unsatisfactory. The IGC is built upon yearly evaluations of undergraduate and graduate courses over the last three years.

The map below highlight the national distribution of the 2017 IGC, for universities and federal institutes. For more information click on the colored dots.

It is important to highlight the most (>50%) of the public institutions are highly ranked (grades 4 and 5), and that there are no private institution grade 5. As a matter of fact, only 16% attained grade 4. This goes against the recent report made by the world bank suggesting that the government shouldn´t have public universities. It seems that the world bank report has overlooked several facts that would lead to a conclusion contrary to what was suggested, as h…

Has Science & Technology really peaked? Funding in the last few years have always been ever so reducing, and in Brazil reaching less than what it was in 2005. It is a real shame, also because this dim future reduces the chance of attracting bright young and talented researchers. Most are thinking twice before becoming a scientist. Don´t we need science anymore? Has its golden age passed? It surely seems so considering the current policies.

Even overseas fundings are being cut on environmental protection, while general public knowledge suffers as a consequence with the uprising of climate change denials, flat-earthers, and vaccine efficacy among others. Science isn´t a democracy, there is no vote for current views, it is based on facts, that leads to a few scenario for our future. Therefore serious investment needs to be made to achieve possible solutions to current world problems.

I believe most people may find the statement of a scientific fact, an ideological view, one that can´…